Part 4

In part four of his five-part series, Beliefnet expert and Religion 101 blogger Reed Hall explains the similarities between Judaism and Islam.

Part 4: Circumcision and Prayer

As previously mentioned, a recent Pew Forum survey finds that 78.4% of the U.S. population self-identifies as Christian — clearly an overwhelming majority. By contrast, Jews account for only 1.7% and Muslims a mere 0.6% of the U.S. population.

(From a planetary perspective, things look very different. The Pew Forum also reports that Christians account for only 32% and Muslims for some 23% of the total world population. And on the global stage, Jews comprise less than 1% of our combined human populace.)

In any case, a lot of Christians — U.S. Christians in particular, who comprise the vast majority of the American populace — remain relatively uninformed about the basics of both Judaism and Islam. We now continue, therefore, with our ongoing list of similarities and commonalities shared between Jews and Muslims, at least some of which many non-Jews and non-Muslims might find somewhat surprising: male circumcision and prayer.